MIX CHALLENGE - MC103 April 2025 - Submissions until 21-APR-2025 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

[JeroenZuiderwijk]

Hi Strange!
Thank you very much for providing this song for the Mix-challenge. A great song with a melody that has been stuck in my head for days

My mix:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/12nftuge ... 38ry7&dl=0

My mix setup:
Monitoring: Genelic 1030A in a accoustic treated room.
DAW: I mix in Reaper mostly in the box with the stock plugins that come with Reaper. They sound great and I am very familiar with the Reaper plugins so I know how to get the best out of them.

Mixing:
I have been mixing a lot of pop / EDM / rock music lately and with that sound in mind I started my first mix of this song……so my first version of this mix was a very hyped pop / modern mix with a bigger then life drum and pumping bass, lots of high end detail…..and then I realized….it didn’t match the feel of the song at all!!! All felt really out of place the song needed (in my opinion) to be more dry…to sound a bit more intimate…and I decided to start all over again.

That was a good thing. I stripped all the tracks from there plug ins and pulled back the faders and started with making a balance with just the faders….then listened to what else was needed.

Some parallel compression on the drums. The room mic I compressed hard but only used little for some extra bite. The drums overall I did’t process much…it was mostly about volume. The drumbuss goes to a lexicon PCM90 reverb (very subtle).

The guitars I panned left and right for some stereo spread and to keep them out of the way from the LV. Some guitars needed a bit more bite…so they got some waveshaping distortion. The rythm guitar got some room verb / slap back delay.

The LV I automated the volume and it has got some compression and a little 2kHz boost to let it cut through the mix. It goes to a reverb / delay fx with lots of feedback to let it sit better in the mix.
The backing vocals I also automated and compressed relatively hard. There is a stereo chorus because I thought it sounded cool.

The bass I always find hard to determin the right volume. For my taste I like the bass to be loud, but for a balanced mix I need to turn the volume down. I used some reference tracks to check the volume of the bass. Still....I have some doubts about the volume (being maybe a little too low now).

The synths and piano only got some compression and eq. Againg it was all about finding the right balance in volume to make the song work.

I realize the mix isn’t perfect (is that even possible?) but I hope you like the direction of the sound.

Cheers,

Jeroen

[Dodgingrain]

My mix is here: https://1drv.ms/u/c/6b8275e712f941aa/Ee ... g?e=5SpXet\

Notes:
Drums: Really not a ton here, some gating on the kick to make it less flabby, other than that just leveling, eq, and some compression. Mainly used dbx-160 for compression with a 50/50 wet/dry mix which gives a nice bit of punch when there is at least 10db of reduction.

Bass: Again not a ton of work here, just levels and a side chain input from the kick drum on the bass.

Guitar: Mostly levels and panning. For the hard right and hard left gtrs there is a short delay on the opposite side to give the hard panned gtrs some ambiance.

Keys: Mostly saturation and a bit of eq to give them a little more bite. The synth bridge got a little extra distortion. The pads have some tape saturation and a widener.

Vocals: Since I don't speak German hopefully these came out ok. Pretty much standard vocal chain here with a de-esser, FET compressor for peak control, and ssl compressor as a final finisher. All vocals have a squashed add track for thickness.

On the pre-master bus I'm using some tape saturation, and an api compressor for glue.

As far as monitoring environment its a moderately treated room using either adam s2v's with a sub, avantone cubes, or sony mdr7506 headphones. I use room correction on the adam's, sometimes I use room correction on the avantone cubes, I don't use any correction on the sonys. The adam's are also calibrated and phase aligned.

[ludl]

Hi !
I mixed in Cubase using its channelstrip EQ, softube AmericanClass A on many tracks, additional compression on some tracks, two different dlys, three different revs - on Aux busses - spring rev on guitar, flanger on synth, some fader rides/FXautomation...
through Sennheiser HD650 and Focal Shape 60 both with sonarworks soundID in a treated room. Also checked on bassy bth earpods.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M0iLuo ... sp=sharing

Thx, ludl

[RicardoGuzman]

Hi, this is my mix
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19N4tj4 ... sp=sharing

My studio is a room that hasn’t been professionally treated, although I’ve added some panels and foam. I work with Focal Alpha Evo 5-inch monitors.

The song, in its cheerful vibe and connection to the small things, also carries a deep existential side, which becomes evident in the density of the C part of the track. Sonically, I tried to approach this with an energetic and present sound, something that feels upfront, but with layers of reverb and delay to create that deep space and represents the underlying theme. All of this are carried by a powerful kick/bass combo that for me represents the flow of vital time.

To fill out and thicken the verses, I panned the guitars and applied reverb to each, panned to the opposite side. Beyond that, I didn’t do much more to the guitars, just a bit of filtering to remove unnecessary sub-bass and some bus compression. I used a sub synth for the kick, multiband saturation with Spectre on the snare to get more punch around the 200 Hz range. The full drum kit is sent to a glue compressor, a Pultec EQ, and a UAD Pure Plate reverb. I added a bit of saturation to the bass using Arturia’s V76 preamp, compressed it with an 1176 with a very fast release for punch and more saturation, and then ran it through a Pultec. I used some chorus on synths to widen the stereo image. Vocals are processed with the classic 1176/LA-2A chain, an Ampex tape emulation (UAD), and Waves S1 for stereo width. They’re also sent to a plate reverb and a Space Echo emulator.

Interesting production, no track feels unnecessary, and I liked that everything seems to serve a very clear purpose.

[Gunnar]

Hey everyone,

this one was a pleasure to mix! I had a lot of fun!

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/fawu9779 ... 646xv&dl=0

The vocals are very dynamic, so I manually reduced the dynamic by cutting and setting the volume. Did the same with some strat-licks. I featured the sweetspots of each tracks with EQ and "glued" Tracks that belong together (e.g. claps+snare or the guitars).

I started with a very dry sound (like in a car), to match with the theme of the song. In the chorus I added delay and reverb on the vocals for two reasons: I wanted more excitement and variety and I wanted to fill the gap after the word "Weg".

The arrangement of this song has incredibly much opportunities to automate everything and I really had a lot of fun to do this (levels, delay, reverb, eq, compression, saturation).

Overview of the treatments (I don´t mention EQ or/and compression on nearly every track):

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DRUMS:
acoustic snare + toms --> large plate reverb at the bridge
Bus Compression (SSL) and parallel compression (SSL), Saturation (Black Box) and limiter

BASS:
some adjustments with "bass professor"

DRUM/BASS BUS:
Shadow Hills + Black Box

GUITAR BUS:
Klanghelm DC1A3 + Airwindows tape emulation

KEYS BUS:
1176 + multiband compression to make place for the vocals at 2-5khz

WHISLTE:
Room+plate

VOCALS
Room+plate+delay at chorus
Bus: shadow hills + Pultec

MASTER:
multiband comp+SSL comp.+luftikus eq+Klanghelm IVGI+limiter+airwindows tape

Mixed on Yamaha HS 7 in Studio One. After moving in a new apartment this year i didn´t measure the room, I just put all my absorbers in it and it works for me.

[titantraxx]

Hi! This is my first time submitting to Mix-Challenge even though I’ve been a member for quite some time. Recently I’ve been lucky to have some down time, which is rare for me, so I decided to give my take on this song which sounds great already. Thanks Strange.


MY MIX: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nCk7Gi ... sp=sharing

My Goal

My intentions with this song was to make it a little more polished and slightly more pop than rock. The aim was to give it more separation frequency wise, make the drums tighter and a little more prominent, create movement in the percussion and synths, give the vocals a more significant sheen via fx, and add more character to the guitars. Overall I want it to be more happy and upbeat.


Studio Setup

Monitors: DMAX Audio Super Cubes 5 (Room correction using inverted impulse response with a Harman house curve. It’s far better than eq, Sonarworks, etc. in my opinion)

Headphones: Hifiman HE-4XX (Over Ear Harman correction)

Interface: Merging Technologies Anubis Pro (Best headphone amp I’ve ever heard in an interface)

DAW: Reaper 7 (Mixed 100% in the box)


Mix Details

Bass

I loved the low end of the di and the character of the mids from the amp. So I used both, separating each with high and low pass filters to create a Frankenstein bass. Each section was eq’d and compressed to be fully controlled and consistent and to also play well with the kick. There is very subtle ducking happening with Soothe2 when the kick hits.

Drums

The drum bus has Cradle Orion on using only the first 2 modules, Color - A and Harmonics with 80hz at 17% to help the drums punch in the mids on smaller speakers. The individual kit elements have several things going on: Gating, SSL channel compression, EQ, transient shapers, and parallel compression.

Percussion

Congas have dual parallel compression returns. One with an API 2500 to emphasize the transients. The other is an SSL Bus Comp to emphasize the sustain. Left right movement by PanMan with a little room from Seventh Heaven Pro.

Claps just used some EQ, compression and transient shaping

Lead and BG Vocals

Equilibrium, Unisum, DyneOne3, FIRComp as a De-Esser, and volume automation where needed.

Vocal FX Returns

Fabfilter Pro-R 2, Eventide H3000 Factory (MicroPitchShift), Echoboy (Reverb), EchoBoy (Ping Pong) into Primavera

Guitars

I stuck with the amps and ditched the di. Compression with Acustica El Rey and Undertone Unfairchild. EQ was Pulsar Modular P450 MDN (API 550). FX are Pulsar Primavera, Echoboy, Seventh Heaven Pro Room/Studio. DSEQ3 to remove a few resonances.

E-Piano

DrMS was used to make room in the center and give the piano stereo width, EQ, compression, and finished with Softube Tape Echoes for vibe.

Synths

In the bridge I have The Scream Distortion in Parallel followed by Tremolator for some subtle pulsing rhythmic movement. In the rest of the song I have subtle modulated short reverb creating front to back movement and depth.

Mix Bus

Nebula Tim P SSL 4000 G Bus Compressor 4:1, 30ms Attack, 100ms Release, -2db max gain reduction at the loudest part. Followed by SPL MixHead Ultimate.

Macro dynamic volume adjustments of each section using automation. The song builds gradually more and more in level and energy from start to finish.

Overall Loudness Specs: -16 LUFS Integrated, -1.3db True Peak

This was a really fun song. I had a blast mixing it. I look forward to participating more.

[CarefreeStyle]

Here is my mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15lG0RD ... MWJ0R/view

I am CarefreeStyle and this is my first mix for this site. I have been following this site for a bit and looked at entering a mix before but this is my first time actually going through with it.
I will be graduating with a two year degree in audio engineering in May and hope to find a job on the production side of things. So stuff like this is legit good practice.

Overall I think my mix is a bit darker and wider than the original. I felt like I wanted to keep a lighter, flowing feeling to this song but when I heard some of the grittier synths and guitars used in the bridge, I wanted to bring that out. I think sitting in traffic and driving down the highway is inherently a pretty stressful thing especially if you have somewhere to be or someone you want to see. So I wanted to bring out some of those more stressed sounds in the mix.

My main DAW at home is Reason. I just love it's rack and visibility. I mainly EQ with TDR Nova and I like Reasons compressors and the Ripley delay/reverb. Those are most of the tools I used.

My monitors are Guitar Center Sterling MX5's I got for really cheap but I mainly like my DT 770s. My room isn't treated or anything, I rent and it's a small, oddly shaped room.

Drums: I used less of the overheads and hat, and I put some distortion and EQ on the room track to make it a bit nasty. But I love the way it sounds.
Bass: Mostly just EQ, At first I gave it a lot of bass and it quickly felt overwhelming especially with the bass drum. But I dialed it back to a place that feels good.
Guitars: Lots of EQ work in the guitars. Took out a lot of low end for clarity and made some space to prevent conflicts with the vox.
Synths and Keys: I really liked the synth pad, I used a stereo widener on it and gave it some more presence in places. The E pianos was pretty too, and I added some Ripley delay and reverb to it.
Vox: Used a lot of clip gain to keep things in balance, not much fader movement. All the vocal parts experienced EQ and compression. The third back up vox part got some extra effects. The main vox got it's own kind of small room reverb, and the backing vocals share a similar bussed reverb.

I really want to go in and master this song, all I've done is use a bit of a bus compressor. I think I could maybe balance the vocals a bit better but I'm comfortable with where they sit right now.

This was a comfy song to mix.

Thanks for listening!

[SonicAuthority]

Thanks to Mister Fox for hosting.

Thanks to Strange for providing.

Thanks to the community for listening.

Download: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... drive_link

Stream the Full Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E38s9rukrc

Mix Comparison Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBBNYbCzjQ4

About:

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This is my first public mixing project as Sonic Authority Productions.

I started Sonic Authority with the intent of helping artists make the best music possible.

This is my first attempt at a public portfolio project to help demonstrate this mission.

Thoughts and Experience:

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I found this mix challenge and saved my first project less than a week ago on Monday, 4/14/2025.

My experience is primarily as an EDM producer over the last 10+ years.

However, I discovered that I consistently spent more time mixing than I did producing or songwriting.

I also spend more time listening to mixing engineers that worked with artists directly.

It became clear to me over time that mixing is truly my passion; where I naturally spend my time.

I find it most fulfilling when I can combine my passion for audio with a songwriter or band that has a vision.

Reference Tracks:

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I feel like my mix does not live up to the request of the artist to have the same vibe as the Pharrell track.

I say this because vocal and guitar processing were discovered as personal weak points during this challenge.

Most of the EDM I produce is without vocals and I almost never use guitars.

I'm primarily a drummer and bassist as a musician.

I did take the time to manually edit the waveforms for all instruments where there were breaths, fret noises, and other small nuances.

But once I have a clean signal, I did not have an immediate path forward of what to do next.

With more time, I would have liked to experiment with additional processing on the guitars and vocals with choruses, delays and other spatial effects.

I also would like to have bounced a 'Ghost' of the lead vocal.

I refer to the technique of playing the vocal backwards with 100% reverb, bouncing it to audio, and then reversing it again (back to normal) and sidechaining it with the source signal to give the vocals more movement and feeling in the spaces in between.

Mixing Ojective:

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My primary concern was simple: Make it sound good across as many speaker types as possible.

What I lack in vocal and guitar mixing skills, I hoped to make up for with overall balance, energy, and clarity, while maintaining loudness without sounding overly compressed or lacking dynamics.

This is what I would like validation on. Everything else mentioned above I can work on with time, but if I can't get this foundation right, then I need to make it right, so please let me know.

If I *can* get this right, then that means all I need to do is work on the things mentioned above, which I would have done next had I come across this challenge sooner.

I look forward to future competitions now that I am aware of this event!

The song:

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I love it. It's been ear wormed into my brain the past week. I find myself listening to it in my head when I'm not home, wishing I could be at my computer with my headphones pressing play. I feel like I've even learned a bit of German in the process!

Production:

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There's so much to say here that I don't think it makes sense for me to document every decision I made during mixing. It was significant. From processing the drums, layering the amps, bussing the channels and mid/side EQ'ing, I think it would only make sense to document this if there are any specific questions or if this is a well ranked mix.

Monitoring:

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Approximate Time Spent: ~30 Hours.

Monitoring: Arctis 7 Pro (2017) Headset. Waves CLA NX & Waves Germano NX.

Entirely mixed on the Arctis 7 headset without any other references besides the Waves plugins.

I have Auratones and Yamaha NS7's and a Focusrite Interface with Audio Technica m50x's.

However, they are all in storage as I am in the process of relocating.

During the process of this project, I discovered https://autoeq.app/ and Waves NX plugins.

I have fully implemented the Waves NX plugins into my workflow this past week.

I will soon be testing the headphone EQ software now that this submission is completed.

My References Used:

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I appreciate @Strage providing the reference of Pharrell Williams "Happy" for this project as it clearly aligns with his vision for it, and paints a beautiful picture for a potential music video.

However, as a former DJ, I sometimes have songs subconsciously pop into my mind while listening to them, and this is my intuitive cue that there is something I need to investigate.

The song "Locked out of Heaven" from Bruno Mars (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-fA-gBCkj0) organically came into my mind while taking a mixing break, and I eventually used that as my reference master, especially for the bass tone.

I split the stems using https://lalal.ai/ to compare the sounds and create reference curves with https://www.voxengo.com/product/spanplus/.

After getting the tone I desired, I needed more references in the genre to compare this track to. Then I found this mashup since many people seemed to hear The Police in Bruno Mars, like I heard Bruno Mars in Strange: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TcaW5j1hOg.

I now had three reference tracks to switch between (in addition to the two other provided by Strange), and six total virtual "speakers" to listen to thanks to the NX plugins. I used the NX plugins significantly during the final stages of mixing and mastering.

The Mood:

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The mood I tried to create was intense.

As if the singer / listener / driver truly was racing for hours.

Not just in their mind, but on the road, with their adrenaline pumping.

I made sure the drums, bass and rhythm guitar had this intensity and "drive".

However, I wanted to still have the subtle sweetness of the lyrics come through.

I wanted them to be bright, clear, and intimate. The singer did a great job expressing this.

During the softer sections, I wanted the piano to clearly indicate the mood change.

I made sure it became the new focal point, without taking over the vocals #1 spot.

The Synth section was meant to feel loud, big and boomy.

As if there was no longer any limits to the singers expression and they were projecting their voice on a stage.

Layering the synth with the distorted guitar helped add this power and presence.

Mixing Enjoyment:

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I really enjoyed getting the bass dialed in just right.

For me, it's the core element of the groove, regardless of genre.

Adding a stereo widener to the 120hz+ frequencies really helped fill out the sound.

I cut almost everything above 2.5khz. I used a sub-harmonic generator to fill out the sound a little more where I felt the natural resonance from the pickups, amp or DI was lacking.

Using a transient shaper and basic waveform editing of fades and mutes fixed minor imperfections that an auto-gate would not pick up without ruining the signal.

I also enjoyed getting the final mix curve just right as well, because it took me about three days to really dial it in, and there was a moment where it finally 'clicked' and translated across all the NX virtual speakers.

It turned out to just need more saturation and drive, dynamic EQ and multi-band compression to fill out the gaps.

It came down to a significant mid boost around 700hz, dip around 420hz, and a high shelf cut starting around 3k.

I have screenshots of both the mix curve and signal processing on the bass I may include.

Mixing Dislikes:

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The snares and claps caused me some grief.

The triple snare mic situation felt a bit daunting at first, and I considered using a single mic'd version of the snare.

One of the three had a different wave form that I thought was not phase aligned, but it was (with low correlation). After some volume mixing, transient shaping, EQ and saturation, it sounded much better and had the snap I wanted.

I did struggle with getting the claps to sound as bright and crisp as I would have liked, but these were low priority compared to the rest of the mix and I had to move on.

My CPU was spiking constantly while mixing, leading me to have to re-render new stems regularly. This took an extra three hours on a single day to bounce all my signal chains to get back to a usable mixing state.

I've learned that I need to follow a more strict mixing process to prevent this from happening, and to keep my sends to a minimum. I started with a Mid/Side into a Low / Med / High into a Bus into a Tone, then Saturation, then Limiting mixing send structure and the layered processing was not manageable once I was a few days into mixing.

It was not until two days ago that I was back to a productive mix session due to all this processing overhead. For what it's worth, I'm using this processor: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?id ... 40+2.30GHz.

I learned how to read the latency delay readout of my DAW (Renoise) and pipe it into Chat-GPT with this prompt to quickly identify high latency plugins to bounce my processed signals to audio: List plugin latency in a clean table with separate columns for plugin name/type, track(s) used on, latency in samples, and latency in milliseconds. Standard table output, sorted from highest latency to lowest. Only list the highest 10 results. The data is as follows: <Copy / Paste from Song → Plugin Delay Compensation Info.>

Why?

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Why did I go to such lengths with this project and these notes?

Because I needed a bone to chew on.

I'm constantly looking for opportunities to put my experience to the test.

Not to prove that I can mix or demonstrate it for a portfolio project, though those are benefits.

But simply because I love mixing and know the only way to get better is to do it and find weaknesses to get better.

I had an opening in my schedule recently and decided to focus all my attention here.

Just about every spare hour I had over the past week has been spent on this project.

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
We're in the final 24 hours to submit your mix.


So far, we have 51 entries (compared to 143 Mix Pack downloads).

If you've been sitting on your mix, now is the time to get everything sorted out, post both your link and documentation. Please pay attention to detail (including filename template and file accessibility). Do not put your entry at risk of being disqualified.

Also try to prevent to post at the very last minute to not run into server issues (see Global Countdown).

There will be no deadline extension!



Let the submission's "final rush" commence...

[LowlandsWave]

Hello,

My mix setup:
I use LUNA for mixing, on a Mac mini M2. I use my office as a mixing room. I have some absorption panels on the wall and a modest cloud. I use Sonarworks for monitoring. Monitors are Adam audio T7V. Check my mix also on my Beyerdynamics DT1990pro with Realphones.
I mix completely in the box.

Nice song to mix, it gave me that "I am on the road kinda feeling". Tried to keep the mix punchy and open. I really liked the bridge part, it comes in as a surprise ... Just like when you're on the road; All is fine and suddenly you start thinking ..... what if? Does she really? I really pushed the vocal to make the bridge stand out even more. But , as it goes, All will be fine and soon we're cruising along again.

I mixed it using a Brauerize kind of approach. All busses have a SSL native channel strip on it. Finally, since I was experimenting, I used acces analog and processed the mix down with a touch of culture vulture for some tape warmth.

My mix: LLW mix